LOWELL -- Officer Michael Daigle believed the man walking toward him was armed, and when Daigle ordered that man to stop, the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Daigle.

Daigle drew his own gun but held his fire. The suspect turned and ran, throwing his gun into a yard, where it would be found after his arrest with a live round in the chamber, ready to fire.

Daigle, who had been with Lowell police for about a year at the time, earned the Medal of Valor, the department's second-highest honor Monday for his actions early in the morning of March 25.

He said the incident unfolded so quickly, he didn't have time to be scared.

"It went by in seconds," Daigle said. "I didn't think about it until after.

Officer Michael Daigle, second from right, stands with, from left, his nephew Weston Buswell, 2; his niece Samantha Buswell, 5; his sister Melissa Buswell; his girlfriend, Julie Rydzewski, and his mother Donna Dione. Daigle earned the Lowell Police Department's second highest honor, the medal of valor, for an arrest he made in 2012. He also won an award for taking part in an arrest that led to the seizure of about $79,000 of Oxycodone. SUN/Robert Mills

Daigle and Officer Jose Ramirez were also given an exceptional service bar for an Oct. 26, 2011, arrest in which they found a man with $8,141 and an estimated $79,540 worth of Oxycodone.

Officer Dennis Moriarty earned the department's highest award, the Medal of Honor, for being one of more than a dozen police officers from several towns who held their fire for hours while they tried to reason with a 21-year-old Lowell man who repeatedly told police to shoot him in the early-morning hours of Oct. 22, 2011.

That morning, Moriarty was sent to Bernier Street in Lowell to look for a suspect accused of punching a woman elsewhere in the city. On Bernier Street, Moriarty found the man holding a handgun.

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Alberto Pagan got into a car and fled, with Moriarty in chase, coming to a stop in Pelham, N.H., where police used stop sticks to disable his car.

Police from more than a half-dozen agencies surrounded Pagan as he held a loaded gun to his own head, asked police to shoot him, and refused to put his gun down.

About 5:25 a.m., Moriarty and four other officers from Pelham, Salem, N.H., and New Hampshire State Police fired simultaneously when Pagan pointed his weapon at an officer from a short distance away.

Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee, left, with Sgt. Mark LeBlanc and officers Christopher Bomil and Brian Kinney, who received an exceptional service bar Monday for being among 250 local officers who drove to Virginia in December to deliver Christmas cards to a 5-year-old boy with brain cancer whose Christmas wish was to get cards from police officers and firefighters. SUN/Robert Mills

The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office spent more than a month investigating, and ruled the shooting was justified -- the only option left for the officers who fired.

The day after the shooting, Leanne Dinsmore, who lives next to the scene in Pelham and who witnessed much of the back and forth between Pagan and police, told The Sun police "really tried for a different outcome."

Moriarty declined to comment on the incident.

Daigle and Moriarty were among 33 Lowell police officers and seven civilian police employees to be honored Monday night in the department's annual awards ceremony at Lowell Memorial Auditorium.

Members of the city's Warrant Unit, Sgt. Angel Otero, officers Raymond Jean, Kenneth Moore, Jose Rivera, Middlesex Deputy Sheriff Todd Courtemanche and state Trooper Michael Forni were given a distinguished-unit action bar for their work in a year when arrests were made on 1,606 warrants.

Sgt. Jack Sheehan earned two awards. One was for recognizing a description and identifying a man later charged with robbing two banks in Lowell. Sheehan was also honored for running into a Central Street home in an effort to save a man from a fire.

Sgt. Matthew Penrose and Officers Matthew McCabe and Paul Paradise were honored for helping rescue several people from a fire on First Street Boulevard, including a woman who was carried out of the building by Penrose, and a woman in a wheelchair.

Officers Dan Desmarais and Francis Kennedy were honored for arresting John Morrell for possession of a firearm shortly after Morrell was released from prison in connection with a manslaughter conviction.

Ann Marie Page, former president of the Centralville Neighborhood Action Group, and current president of the Citywide Neighborhood Council, was also honored for her role in connecting police with residents of neighborhoods around the city.

Mayor Patrick Murphy told the officers and their families it is only because of the work of police that others can do the work they do.

"Most of you would say 'that's just my job,' " Murphy said. "But we know it takes a special kind of person to put their life on the line to keep peace on our streets so that we may all have peace of mind."

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